El tango

“El tango es un sentimiento triste que se baila” ('The tango is a sad feeling which you dance') -  Enrique Santos Discepolo, Argentinian tango and milonga composer

I am nurturing a dream about learning how to tango, wrap myself in a fiery red dress, put on fishnet stockings and strappy dance shoes and walk the streets of Buenos Aires in search for the dance of my life. For some reason, despite the fact I've never set foot in Buenos Aires (yet!), I know without a doubt is somewhere I must go. As if some sort of unfinished business from a previous life calls for me there. And now I know why...

I am firm believer in the invisible connection between things in life. Having found a deal at a hotel in Bournemouth which included a week-end of tango made me think that I may be getting a step closer to the vision of me dancing the tango in Buenos Aires. I was closer to the truth than I expected because I finally learnt a thing or two about tango.

All I really knew about tango before this week-end was that it is a difficult dance. And passionate. The rest I tried to figure out by watching other people dance but couldn't figured out the pattern. What were the rules, I kept asking myself?... But then I found out there are no rules. 

The tango is a dance where the man leads and woman follows, in a sensual embrace. The tango is all about trust and now I know what everyone means by tango being a difficult dance. I am not comfortable with letting go and trusting myself into somebody else's hands. In all honesty, especially when it comes to men... I like to know what's coming, be in control, do my steps, perhaps even nudge my dancing partner a bit when I think he's falling behind. Not in tango though. In tango you have to close your eyes and take a leap of faith, accept the lead and let yourself be taken on a journey. 

I guess there's only one man I could dance the tango with: the kind that I could entrust myself to share the saddest feeling in the world with.

 

Follow your dreams

When it comes to dreams, there should be no right or wrong.

As some of you know, I did a charity trekking last year in Ethiopia, raising money for Transaid, a London based small charity running vital projects in many countries in Africa. This was only possible because I raised £3,000 pounds. All from donations from people I know, friends, relatives, work colleagues, people I’ve just met. People who made it possible. And if it wasn’t for these people, I wouldn’t have trekked the Simien Mountains, I wouldn’t have contributed to life saving projects and I probably would not have been inspired. I am a lucky person for having had such an amazing support from the people in my life, but  if the help came from a different source, I would not have hesitated in accepting it.

And here I am now, reading about the ‘Experience of a lifetime’ project of Reckitt Benckiser, and thinking this is worth sharing. Because it is time for INSPIRE and if five people have been voted to embark on the adventure of their lives and raise money for Save the Children charity, then this is INSPIRING. The first one, Khaled, 32, from Algeria, has started his adventures and when he’s back from Peru (he chose to do the famous Inca trail to Machu Picchu and who can blame him?) I am hoping to be able to contact him and get him to share a few thoughts with us. Perhaps a few inspiring words to make us look for our own opportunities to make our own dreams come true. There’s nothing wrong with wining a competition, if that’s what it takes to get inspired.

When I wrote about the experience of my own trek, I ended the post like so: ‘I knew I was never going to be same after this. I knew I wanted to do even more... As much as I could...’

And hopefully I am doing this now, with my INSPIRE campaign and, along with that, by having the satisfaction of knowing I am helping to raise money for Save the Children.

If you want to contribute too, go on to Experience of a Lifetime website and help raise money for Save the Children too. You’ll see how J

Stay inspired!

Hell Girl’s been busy crafting The Destiny of Shaitan

Meet my first INSPIRE guest: Laxmi Hariharan, the author of Kindle best-selling fantasy novel
The Destiny of Shaitan

As promised a few posts ago, it’s time to get inspired. The INSPIRE campaign I have launched should do exactly what it says: inspire people. And what better way to do that than hearing from those who have been there - in the same place you are standing right now, not sure which way to go and how to go about it -  and took their chance, made a bet on their dream, closed their eyes and let the wheel spin. Because, as Laxmi says, ‘Else I couldn’t live with myself’.

Laxmi Hariharan is the author of Kindle best-selling fantasy novel The Destiny of Shaitan. A technophile who is fascinated with sword play, she also likes smoking cigars, swigging chai and keeping secrets. Having lived in Bombay, Hong Kong and London, she has a fifteen year career in international media marketing with blue chip brands such as MTV Networks. She believes that she is Hell Girl reborn.

I met Laxmi about 5 years ago. She was a senior marketer in a company I had just joined and I can vividly remember how her presence used to fill the space around the office: she was all life, and joy and laughter. I admired her deeply both as a professional and as a person and tried to keep in touch as much as London City life allows it. Recently, I found out she has written a book and I immediately told myself she would be the ideal person to interview for INSPIRE. Perhaps you all know by now I am also an ‘aspiring’ writer (I hate the word ‘aspiring’ but can’t think of another term to say it better) and it felt only natural to contact Laxmi and ask her kindly to be my INSPIRE person. She open heartedly accepted and here is what she told me about her journey.

We all grow up thinking we'll become famous or amazing people. When you were a little girl, what was your dream? Sounds like a cliché but I have a vivid recollection of being awestruck by the mango tree outside my window which inspired me to write my first poem when I was five years old. And at the end of it the simple truth was that I was a writer. I knew I would write books. My first born The Destiny of Shaitan just took longer from conception to delivery. Almost nine years.

What is your dream today? Does this still match up with the dream from childhood? On a flight from New York to London, a few years on the 11th of September (I always seem to fly in or out of NY on September 11) I wrote down ten things I wanted to do before I died. Top of that was getting my first novel out while I was young enough to enjoy it. And I am just relieved I did it. Else I couldn’t live with myself.

Tell us your story. What is your secret to being able to do what you want to do? I still balance the creative with the commercial. The commercial pays the bills and frees up mind space to be creative. Balance is the key I think to doing everything you want in life. It may be boring but it’s true.

Tell us how being a writer makes you feel?
We are one. As in I am the writer is the story. Does that make sense?

Do you think that our happiness can be influenced in any way by external factors or is it all 'an inside job'? Can we blame the world for our failures? I do believe in destiny. Hence as a teenager I was obsessed with changing the lines on my palm to make it into the type of life I wanted. I am still trying :)

What advice would you give people who are thinking about becoming writers? Just do it!

Who/what inspired you? I grew up in Bombay hearing ancient Indian legends and stories from my grandmother. And then I arrived in Hong Kong - which became my metier, my love, my trust. My heart raced from the time I landed there to the time I left. Filled with the most bizarre of people who must have stepped right off the next few planets I thought, it forced me to really put pen to paper. I started writing about what would happen if someone landed in such a futuristic city and had strange encounters with life forms there. And that character became to be Tiina in The Destiny of Shaitan. The rest followed.

Some of the films which inspired Laxmi when she created The Destiny of Shaitan universe

What is your next dream? To get my next novel The Seven Islands out next year. Tall order. But I am stubborn.

Wish you best of luck, Laxmi, with your ‘second born’ and thank you for being such an inspiration. May your journey continue to be amazing!

You can find Laxmi’s novel The Destiny Of Shaitan on Amazon. Please click through the link below and buy your own Kindle copy: you’ll be transported to a universe which you won’t want to leave!  

Click here to buy your own copy!

Hope you enjoyed reading about Laxmi and if you want to ask any questions, don’t be afraid. You can reach Laxmi here:

https://twitter.com/#!/laxmi

http://www.facebook.com/laxmihariharanauthor

www.laxmihariharan.com

http://www.pinterest.com/laxmihariharan

Next time we’ll be talking to someone who gave up a promising career in marketing in favour of making a difference for the less fortunate. Until then, stay inspired!

Food for thought

Last week a man wrapped himself in gas canisters (?) and took hostages the people from an office not far from mine. We hardly even knew something was happening until we started seeing more people than usual on the street, police everywhere and general mayhem. Soon we were notified that someone took some hostages in an nearby office and that we were in no direct threat so we were encouraged to stay away from the windows and carry on with our normal work.

Which we did. As if nothing happened. In fact I had some guests in one of the meeting rooms, people from our sister agency and their clients. I went in to let them know there was a hostage situation nearby and they might have troubles getting a taxi. They thanked me for the information and continued with their meeting as if nothing happened.

I stood perplexed. A few buildings away some people were in danger of losing their lives and the people in that meeting room didn't care. It was a scary thought especially as I had just realised that I probably reacted the same way. Some people were in danger of losing their lives only a hundred metres away and what was my first concern? To make sure the people in the meeting room get a taxi!?

It made me think about what life in a big city does to us. I never questioned it, I always knew I had to live in a big city but what's the price I have to pay? My own sensitivity reduced to a very thin, almost invisible layer? When exactly have we all become desensitised, when did we stop caring? Does it really have to hit us in the face to start thinking about anything other than ourselves? To be honest, if I was one of the people taken hostage, I would find some comfort in knowing that people stopped for a second from whatever it was that they were doing and thought about me. Of course, there isn't much any of us could have done in the situation, it was after all a police job. But just to stop and consider, remember we are still all human and life is not all about the marketing plan, sales targets, conference calls and whatever else. When facing death, we'd wish we had considered that before it was too late.

Fortunately, nobody died that day. My guests made it to the airport on time and everything went back to normal. It just got me thinking. We ought to feel more, really...

Stay inspired! 

People like us



PEOPLE LIKE US

 by Robert Bly

'There are more like us. All over the world
There are confused people, who can't remember
The name of their dog when they wake up, and people
Who love God but can't remember where

He was when they went to sleep. It's
All right. The world cleanses itself this way.
A wrong number occurs to you in the middle
Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time

To save the house. And the second-story man
Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives,
And he's lonely, and they talk, and the thief
Goes back to college. Even in graduate school,

You can wander into the wrong classroom,
And hear great poems lovingly spoken
By the wrong professor. And you find your soul,
And greatness has a defender, and even in death you're safe.'

As part of my new INSPIRE campaign, I have approached a few of the people I know who have turned their lives around and had the courage to take the plunge and set out in the pursuit of their dreams.

In his book, 'Authentic Happiness', Martin Seligman, the pioneer of positive psychology, offers amongst other solutions for finding more happiness,  the suggestion that people are happiest when they’re using their signature strengths. Seligman says that if we discover a calling, something that links to a greater good, which utilizes our signature strengths, we tend to be happy.

With this in mind, I am going to ask my friends a few questions the answers to which I hope will charge me, keep me going in the quest for my dream. Some of them dedicated time to becoming photographers, others have written books, some have decided to invest their lives in the greater good and now do charity work, while others went on to turn a hobby into a way of living.

Almost every person I know has a dream, of doing something other than what they are doing. But only some of us wake up one day and decide they can't postpone the dream any longer. And they are people like us, like you and me...

I hope their stories will get you where you want to be. Stay inspired!

Note: Collage made with pictures of friends. I hope they don't mind I've used them, but if they do, I will remove the image...Just let me know.

Inspire

My motivational collage
(sourced via bing images and created with photovisi)

A few days ago I decided to turn my life around. I am not sure when and how it became totally clear to me that this was it! The decision I've been postponing for the whole of my life was finally made. I wasn't going to sit around anymore, complain about men, weather, people on the tube, lack of motivation or whatever else; I was going to take active part in creating the life I want for myself. And I know it's going to be a long and hard journey but I am finally ready to embrace the change and deal with all the obstacles, the set-backs, the disappointments, the rejections, the fear...

Because not doing so it's something I won't be able to live with. I have reached the point when I am clear about how a meaningless life would made me feel. I've been through that already, I've experienced the lows of denying my true nature, trying to be who I'm not, trying to pursue for myself other people's dreams, blending in, looking for comfort, being scared! Like when I was on top of the mountain looking down with the fear of being rejected by the slope, for not being good enough. The only thing I am scared about is not to do what I now set out to do.

I am not entirely sure where this new found energy came from but I suspect there was a series of factors that brought it along. The Hunger Games, the dumping, the cold and the rain, the need for something greater, the reminder of who I used to be...

I used to be the teenager who wrote poetry and secretly 'admirehated' Mircea Eliade for training himself sleep only 4 hours a night when just a highscool pupil so he can read and write more, the teenager who was consuming some of the world's greatest literature with no or little interest in going out and partying with her peers, the teenager who had very big dreams and was regularly writing in her diary 'I don't want to die with a mediocre soul'. And it suddenly occurred to me that I don't know what happened to that teenager. She tried too hard to save herself the pain of failure and became just like everybody else.

And here I was, reclaiming my teenage self and deciding that fear was no longer an option. I took a few deep breaths and closed my eyes. The problem with becoming your true self is selecting which individual activity you are going to pursue. And after letting some of the options dance in a circle inside my head, I eventually saw them aligning into what seemed to be a word. I concentrated to try and read the word and smiled when I finally could make it out. It was INSPIRE!

Therefore, everything I will ever do from now will be to inspire and be inspired. My whole life will revolve around inspire and with your help we will inspire each other. I am planning to ask a few of my friends who have proved to be an inspiration themselves to give us some insights to share with us all so we can be inspired and inspire others.

So this is the first step. Making the decision. The rest will naturally follow.

Stay inspired!

The boy with the bread

'The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread'  
Mother Teresa. 

I know I've been going on and on about the Hunger Games the last few days and I risk sounding like a broken record by now but there are not many  stories that moved me so deeply and shook me to the core as much as the Hunger Games did. To the point that I am almost upset this is only the product of a very talented someone's imagination and not a real story (minus the violence and the destruction, of course, but there's already plenty of that going on in the world as it is).  To the point that I am amazed how Suzanne Collins did such an incredible job with the characters, how she made them almost legendary, how she gave the world not only a page turner but also a deeply moving story with an ultimately very strong social message.

I can count on my fingers the books that have poisoned me with such an intense emotion, consumed me and burnt me to the point that I almost wanted to disintegrate from my present and live forever between their pages.  I think I can name just a few: Pride and Prejudice, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Shadow of the Wind, One Day... There are probably hundreds of other books I truly enjoyed and appreciated, but which didn't leave me empty and still shaken the moment that last page turned. Hunger Games did...

It's because of the boy with the bread. I mentioned already a few days ago that I fell in love with a 17-year old fictional character: Peeta Mellark, the boy with the bread.  I've been thinking about it since: what is the one thing I can say about this character, the one word that says it all and it's the one truly necessary quality for me to fall hopelessly in love with someone. It's because he's noble. Yes, noble is the word, because it means so many things: distinguished, moral, honest, of excellent character, principled, worthy, dignified, admirable, courageous, high-minded. All these in the same person,  a normal, gentle, strong, friendly and approachable person. That's the most attractive thing in the world to me. And I am glad I finally figured it out.

I feel so inspired by his character (and many others from the book) that I am almost afraid to take a look at my life and realise I am not noble. At least not at the moment... Don't suppose you can call yourself noble just by living your normal life, not hurting anyone, but neither doing anything amazing for someone else either, just following your everyday routine, not really being fully aware of the things and people around, engulfed in your own thoughts about your own self. I don't think I can call myself noble and that's a truth I have to face...


I've been looking at my life for a long time now. Turning it and tossing it around without figuring it out what I am looking for. But I think I found the answer. I need to step out of my comfort zone and become a noble person, someone who cares, someone who inspires, someone who gets closer to the truth. I am yet to find the expression of that, but having mentioned to one of my good friends the other day how engulfed I was in the Hunger Games and how I wished so hard for me to be capable of inspiring such feelings in people she said I was already doing that... That surprised me because I never thought much about my blog posts. I always thought they were some kind of therapeutic expression of my feelings and emotions. But she said: 'We all feel this kind of things, but we can't all write about them the way you do...' I thank her for that. She may have awaken something in me..Some sort of hunger... 


'So before he can talk, I stop his lips with a kiss. 


I feel that thing again. The thing I only felt once before. In the cave, last year, when I was trying to get Haymitch to send us food. I kissed Peeta about a thousand times during those Games and after. But there was only one kiss that made me feel something stir inside. Only one that made me want more (...)


And after a few attempts, Peeta gives up talking. The sensation inside me grows warmer and spreads out from my chest, down through my body, out along my arms and legs, to the tips of my being. Instead of satisfying me, the kisses have the opposite effect, of making my need greater. I thought I was something of an expert on hunger, but this is an entirely new kind.'


('The Hunger Games - Catching Fire')

The relief

It came to me as a sort of a surprise to realise that although I've recently been dumped in a rather inconsiderate way, I feel better than ever.

Yes, it took a few days of feeling sorry for myself. Generally speaking my bruised ego didn't want to let go of the fact that a guy actually decided he couldn't even be bothered to dump me. So no phone call, no text, no e-mail, no pigeon, no smoke signals, no post-it, nothing. And I am a bit too experienced in the matters of the heart to start thinking he got hit by a car or had stroke (though, now that I mention, maybe he did have an accident or a stroke...) so I had to accept that he was dumping me in the worst kind of way, the silent way. Considering he confessed he had no tolerance for arguments, I reached the only possible conclusion: he avoided me hoping I would go away all by myself. Which I did.

I realised that being with a guy who made me feel insecure most of the time, not knowing how much I really mattered to him, was a torture. A torture which I gladly accepted in return for the good times we did have together. But a torture is still a torture and since being silently discarded of I feel as light as a feather. I feel that despite everything, all I really need to care about is myself and if a guy is not making me feel like the most amazing and adored woman in the world, he's really not worth the effort.What a relief!

May the odds...

Call me a hopeless romantic but I am reading the Hunger Games and more often than not my eyes are full of tears. I live this book so intensely that sometimes, when drowned in it and magically transported to the universe of hunger, death and repression, but also love and courage I must remind myself that I still do live in the real world.
I'm only half way through and I think I am in love with Peeta. I am so in love with Peeta and his quiet reliability, charming nature strong presence that I totally forgot about the guy I've been dating for two months, who texted me about a week ago that he would call me later and never did contact me again. Nor answered any of my calls... 
I'm so madly in love with the idea of a man who would sacrifice himself for me because I matter that much to him. And who would hold me at night in his arms with such protective intent that my episodes of waking up in the middle of the night with a sense of loneliness, desperation and hollowness (which sadly occur sometimes) would totally dissipate as if erased from my memory.
I'm almost surprised how many feelings get stirred inside of me while reading these books. I thought I had grown bitter, that I developed a protective crust around my soul which stops me from feeling anything anymore and that the only thing left for me to do is to look distrustful around and expect the next guy to do the same and get away unpunished. I almost thought I'd end up writing another bitter post about how coward and rude break-ups should be punished by law, how I deserve at least a bit of respect and how people should not just look at me and shake their heads saying 'That happened to me so many times in the past too...' as if it's normal!
Instead, I don't care. Because none of these men who can't look you in the eye (or at least press the send button) and say what they have to say to you clearly and honestly ever were men. Expecting them to act as they ought to it's as if you'd expect a donkey to win horse race. They just can't. And you can't be upset with a donkey for not having been built like a horse. Or get upset with the rain or the cold for making you feel miserable. They just exist... Your feelings are your own responsibility though...
So what are my feelings then? My feelings are that I am ok. I am ok and I know what I am looking for. I am looking for a man. And if there aren't any more out there, I'll just have to do with the heart warming image of an imaginary Peeta, but certainly nothing less than this...
Oddly enough I went to see the Hunger Games (the movie) with the same guy. And while I was entirely enchanted by the story (even by the brutality... after all, isn't it all a metaphor or the world we live in today,  yet we carry on eating or little sandwich on our lunch break when somewhere else in the world people have to fight for a piece of stale bread, without feeling overly appalled?...) he looked totally unimpressed. While I was hoping to share my enthusiasm with him all he wanted to share with me was a bored comment of how late it was and how the film was not well executed. Looking back, that's when I probably realised he wasn't the guy for me and yet I let another couple of weeks go by before facing that reality. Next time, promise I'll trust my instincts. They're never wrong. They are invaluable for survival... And may the odds be ever in my favour!

A tourist at home

It happened eventually. I got to that point when my visits in my home country start to resemble to any other trip in the world. There is a clear disconnection I now experience when I return for family visits.

I felt like that when I arrived in Bucharest at evening time a few days ago and despite the fact that I've seen it all before, after all I spent nearly 6 years in this city, I couldn't shake off the feeling that I'm just a tourist. Yes, there is a sense of deja vu, but sometimes I get that when I visit the same place a few times. A vague familiarity and yet a certainty that home is somewhere else.

I am restless every time I visit. Like I am a murderer returning to the crime scene. There are a lot of hidden memories that start creeping up when I return home and sometimes I just feel like I want to run away. I am more convinced now that I have to skip Christmas this year and hide somewhere random, like in the jungles of Vietnam maybe. Strangely, I feel more at ease venturing around the world and losing myself in the crowds. It just occurred to me that this must be the feeling people who are born in the wrong body must have... Like a stranger with their own kind...

I am enjoying the time I spend with my family. I still have a family and I cherish these precious moments: they are still alive and healthy and (here's when I can't help but thinking about the passing of time and that they won't be around forever) that they love me and I love them. But that doesn't stop me from looking forward to going back to where I no longer feel like a tourist or like an intruder: home, to London...

What is love?

I recently realised that I know absolutely nothing about love. I know I've been writing about it, whining about not finding it, looking for it, expecting it to come my way, all these things, but I don't know the first thing about it.

This only occurred to me recently and the reason is I have been dating someone for longer than a month! Yay, congrats to me! Seriously, it's not even funny, it's such a new thing in my life and it looks like I am learning as much about myself as I am learning about him.

I am learning that having been single for almost 5 years (yes, my dears, almost 5 years!) turned me into a selfish person. I want things to happen the way I want them (after all, I've been waiting for so long, I might as well get what I want and how I want it!), I want him to do the things I want and jump to conclusions because of my past experiences etc. I am also learning that I am pretty traumatised person and somehow I keep expecting things to turn out for the worst, despite everything going pretty smoothly. And that, to a subliminal level, I am creating scenes and starting up arguments only to prove myself that I was right: things would end up badly sooner or later. That, despite thinking that I am selfless, I actually only really care about myself and what the other can give to me...

Hard things to swallow...  But I realised that by facing this reality I may still have a chance to find out what love is. For now I am catching glimpses of it: liking someone despite their shortcomings, accepting that not everything and everyone is perfect (least of all me!), that things don't always go the way we plan, accepting I am not always right and that perhaps we should give the other person a chance to surprise us with some love instead of always expecting them to let us down...

The fear of falling

A bit over a week ago, I was sat on top on the blue run at the Mottolino mountain in Livigno, Italy, and contemplating the very steep slope at the top of it. It was the last day of my ski trip and I really wanted to go down that slope like a pro. But the moment I looked down, a great panic made my heart shrink and get all the way up to the bottom of my throat. I was paralized with fear. Not a totally unjustified fear if I am to take into account the ski accident from 10 years ago which left me with a broken elbow and two surgeries, but still just fear. It wasn't like I couldn't move, like I didn't know how to plough and turn my way down, but it was all about the fact that I was afraid of just going for it!

Although - slowly and painfully - I did go down that slope twice a day or two before, this time it felt like I had run out of the little courage I had left. I closed my eyes, said a prayer, put on my skis and reluctantly reached for the edge. I slowly watched in terror as I was sliding down the slope, but when I realised that all my body was shaking and that I was simply terrified by the look of that slope, I had the revelation that I had to give up. I took off my skis and frustrated left the slope, with cold tears running down my cheeks.

I spent the next 20 minutes crying silently under my googles and hating everyone who casually and elegantly went down the slope, all the while gathering courage. I tried to visualise how I would do it, thinking of the technique I had to employ to ensure a safe descend and generally just trying to positively make myself do it. I was desperate to do it, I felt like such a failure of not being able to. I am not the one to step away from a challenge, I always push myself, I always like to achieve the things I want to and yet sometimes, a self preservation instinct becomes stronger and my body and mind refuse to do what I tell them.

I was getting cold and the more I was thinking about it, it became obvious, that the less likely I was going to do it. Defeated, I dragged myself to the gondola and went back the cowardly way, crying my heart out all the way back. Unable to admire the beauty of the scenery around me, all I could think about was why? Why was I so afraid when I have been through probably more risky situations before, yet I went in without blinking. Somehow, between bitter tears, I had a revelation: we are always afraid of the unknown. And in this case, I didn't know that I was safely going to reach the end of the slope because experience had taught me that going down a steep slope ends up in broken bones.

But probably what I didn't want to admit to myself was that I didn't really know how to ski. The truth is I never took skiing lessons and, as with many other things in life, I thought I'd get away with it. I learnt it all by myself and since I am a self-taught nature, I assumed that if I just do it enough times, one day I will excell. But in all honesty, sometimes you just need to go back to basics and get it right. After that it's just a matter of practice...

And with this I realised that I wasn't afraid of falling, I was afraid of admitting to myself that I didn't know how to prevent myself from falling...

Truth be told, in everyday life, I find myself on the top of a steep slope more often than I'd like to admit. The extension of my fear is more present than I ever thought it would be. I recently started seeing someone and I already feel I don't know how to 'ski' my way into it. I have broken so many 'bones' down that slope that the thought of arriving safely at the end of the love piste seems like an impossible dream. Whether I decide to slide down and break a 'bone' again or just wait frustratingly on top of the mountain gathering courage and wishing to do it, but not being able to, it's all a very difficult game. Maybe I should go back to basics and learn the love game all over again...

The simple things

Sometimes it really doesn't matter that it's cold and grey. Sometimes, you just become present and aware of the beautiful everyday surroundings. I am a bit disappointed that I fail to see that more often...

On Valentines Day I went to a comedy gig, left slightly early and made my usual way down from Charing Cross to Embankment when I suddenly felt elated. I felt an eerie sort of happiness which I didn't know where it was coming from. But I knew: it was the beloved walk towards Embankment Tube at night. I realised I love this walk... As I was passing an Italian restaurant I remembered the dinner I had there with my friend Liluna when she came visiting last year, the pub where I had drinks with my friend Michael on a cold winter Friday a year ago, the tea at Starbucks with Aga, the really bad date which took place at Gordon's Wine bar and the park just on the left hand side where I brough Mum last summer.

And above all, a pink lit London Eye and the sound of music...'These are a few of my favourite things' Julie Andrews would sing in the 'Sound of Music' and suddenly I could hear it in a saxophone version coming from a street performer outside the tube entrance. It felt so right, so appropriate, so magic. Determined, I reached for my purse, took out all the change I had there and dropped it into his saxophone case. Silently, I made my way inside the tube station singing in my heard 'These are a few of my favourite things' all the way home...

Happy Valentine's Day!

Believe it or not, my friends, I don't care it's Valentine's Day today. Not in a 'I say I don't care but I'm actually  slightly angry I'm alone again' kind of way, but in a more 'I don't care because I am ok with being alone and don't feel like celebrating anything other than hey just another great day of my fabulous life!' kind of way.

The origins of today's day have something to do with a martyr called Valentine who died for his religious convictions, therefore not for an actual demoiselle who may or may not have stolen his heart. It seems that some people around the 14th century decided to set-up a tradition of associating this particular day with romantic love. Hence it is a purely fabricated celebration with no real 'romatic love' origin, except for one man's love for God or religion.

Nothing wrong with celebrating love, I say. But stop telling us we have to buy heart shaped trinkets and give them to The One we love or feel really depressed about not having  The One to love in our lives!

But despite being the marketing monster of today (following closely behind the Christmas money making machine, currently the market leader!), Valentine's day is indeed another beautiful day of our lives. So this year I decided to embrace it rather than hate it!  I decided today I wil be cheerful and happy and I pledge to love myself and give myself the gift of love to show I care.

A very cold February

Source: www.theexperiemntoflife.blogspot.com

February it's been the coldest month of the winter so far. London's even seen some snow and as always lovers and haters of snow have been arguing about whether snow it's good or bad. I don't really care. I don't really care about the cold outside either because I finally learned to wrap up and keep the cold at bay. I also spend a lot of time indoors and when I do have to go out, it's simply painful...

I wonder why I do it though. It's almost like trying constantly to fill a void in my life, I am out doing things, meeting people, getting mentally exhausted. It almost feels like I should feel guilty about the time spent doing nothing. And the more I try filling my time with 'useful' activities, the more I want to stop doing them and just plainly do nothing. It's an interesting dilema I am going through this cold February... To do or not to do?...

I guess the answer is limiting myself to doing only one thing at the time and just to the important things in life. It almost feels I am chasing too many things, I am trying to improve too many aspects of my life all of the sudden and I am growing increasingly tired. My heart is getting cold and I just want some sunshine and a bit of slack from myself...